In December 2021, Pakistan enacted a law promising to transform the way rape cases were investigated and tried in the country, with specialised courts expected to deliver verdicts within four months. Nearly five years later, the numbers tell a different story.
Between 2021 and mid-2026, the four provinces registered 47,452 cases across five categories of rape-related offences, yet convictions remain few, thousands of cases have been cancelled or left unresolved, and the government’s own records reveal significant gaps in accountability.
From Punjab’s extraordinarily high number of registered gang-rape cases to the prolonged trials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the data exposes a criminal justice system in which registering a crime is only the beginning of a long and uncertain journey towards justice.
Pakistan’s Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act, 2021 was enacted to establish specialised courts, crisis centres, trained investigators and speedy justice. Five years later, the federal government is struggling with the basics of the system, thus making justice for rape victims fragmented, sluggish and difficult to measure. The data in this article is all sourced from Pakistan’s Ministry of Law and Justice.
The Anti-Rape Act was aimed at pushing an ordinary criminal justice process rapidly through special courts, specialised police investigation units, hospital-based crisis cells, forensic procedures and a national sex-offender register. However, the government’s monitoring data suggests a complicated story. It seems the system has been built and, in some areas expanded, but its components continue to remain disconnected.
This investigation examines the figures behind those cases, tracing what happens from the moment a complaint is registered and a first information report (FIR) is filed, to the investigation, prosecution and final verdict. By analysing provincial data alongside the procedures established under the Act, it explores where cases are stalled, why accountability remains elusive and whether the legal framework has delivered the change it was designed to bring.
The findings offer a closer look at the distance between registering a crime and securing justice.
Between 2021 and mid-2026, Punjab has accounted for 89.7 percent of all the registered rape cases across the country. Gang-rape alone makes up 62.8 percent of the total national rape-related data, but Punjab has a share of 99.2 percent of all registered gang-rape cases.
In Punjab, gang-rape cases account for 69.4 percent of the total caseload and its 29,555 registered cases are 6.6 times its 4,494 cases of single-perpetrator rape. Every other province shows the inverse pattern. Sindh records 4.3 single-perpetrator rapes for every gang-rape, KP 51 and Balochistan 47.
In Punjab’s first four weeks of reporting after the implementation of the Act (December 4-31, 2021), the province recorded 1,011 gang-rape cases and 15 single-perpetrator rape cases. Hence, Punjab’s figures begin on the same day the Anti-Rape Act was published in Pakistan’s official gazette.
By 2022, the ratio of registered gang-rape cases to single-perpetrator rape cases in Punjab was 16 to 1. By 2025, the ratio had narrowed to 3.4 to 1 because rape cases had increased to 1,846 by 2025 and gang-rape cases had decreased from the previous year to 6,300.
In the first half of 2026, monthly registrations of single-perpetrator rape cases ran about 40 percent below the 2025 average and the registration of gang-rape cases is also down significantly compared to the monthly average last year. Yet, child-rape cases run 29 percent higher, at 187 monthly in 2026 against 145 from 2025. Crime against children is constant. Since 2021, Punjab has registered 8,154 child-rape cases, which is 19.2 percent of its total tally. In 2024, that meant 1,916 cases — more than five a day.
Being in police custody is not safe either. From 2021 to mid-2026, Punjab has had 214 custodial rape cases. This accounts for 99.5 percent of all custodial rape cases in the national dataset, as Balochistan is the only other province to have a registered custodial rape case. The number of custodial-rape cases jumped to 68 in 2024 and is currently 36 in the first half of 2026, which is almost as many as all of 2025 (39). The result was one conviction against 51 acquittals. The province also has 151 rape-and-murder cases with 13 convictions, 43 acquittals and 83 pending cases.
The failure is not in the lack of arrests. Police reports show that 57,159 of the accused individuals — 91 percent of them — were arrested. From 2021 to mid-2026, Punjab cancelled 9,155 cases of rape (21.5 percent), including 6,995 gang-rape cases. During the same time period in Punjab, courts convicted 639 accused individuals across all categories and acquitted 12,741, hence averaging about 20 acquittals per conviction.